Thursday 30 April 2015

#12wbtmayround Pre-Season

Just thought I'd check in to give a bit of an update on how my pre-season is going.

I'll be honest (as I always am!), but even though I'm starting my 13th round, I've only fully, 100% completed all of my pre-season tasks a few times.  I always have the best intentions..... but often I sign up.  I complete a few of the quick ones.  Then I just start the round and 'mean to' do the rest in the first week.  Then I get into the swing of the round and........... some of them just don't get done.  I really believe in them!  I wrote about this on the 12WBT blog, here.  And I meant every word that I said: I really believe in the power of pre-season.  But I don't always apply myself.....

But for the upcoming May round, I am on track, and have done 15 of the 18 tasks!  I'm really proud of myself!  I've felt progressively better and more motivated as I've worked my way through the tasks.
Walking in the rain tonight #noexcuses

As of today, I've done all but 2 of the weekly challenges, and the most difficult task for me, 'Organise and Diarise'.  Every single I round, I find this one so hard to do!  I can't describe just why: because it's also my favourite task!  I LOVE it.  So why do I find it so damn hard?  I've been so bad at organisation and keeping on top of things and correspondence for the past 3 years.  Truly, it has been 3 years, because I remember starting to slip up around the time my first niece was born, and today is her 3rd birthday!

I've improved so much lately, especially with my MCG Dream.  But I'm still not quite there yet, and my calendar is out of date, again.  I'm determined to do all of my pre-season, so I will get this done!  But my favourite / most difficult task may take a few more days.

I did my fitness test this morning, and my score is so disappointing.  I got 13. :(  I'm full of
injuries at the moment and I can't run (so had to walk my time trial), so I'm not surprised, but
Week 1 fitness test result
still, it's pretty bad. :(

As I said in my last post, I had originally chosen to do the Move program, but when the Week 1 plans got released a couple of days ago and I was able to read what the plans involved, I changed to Move 2.  I don't think Move was suitable to me - I'm injured but I can still do more than the Move plans asked for.  Move 2 looked more like what would be good for me right now, and I was excited to see that my fitness score fell into the Move 2 category!  It made me feel satisfied that I had made the right choice.

I tried on my polka dot dress for 'Operation Polka Dot Dress' for the first time, and this was the result.


Week 1 of #operationpolkadotdress

Eeek.

It can only fit better, right?  I have a new page set up (see the link at the top of the page, or here), where I'll upload my weekly update photos.
Lunching with a celebrity chef on Tuesday!

Other than that I've been doing well with food and exercise: I've been on track with calories both in and out and my water uptake has been great.  I've had a few temptations but have gotten through them; there's always temptations.  I've been preparing my meals ahead of time again and have customised my Week 1 menu, ready for next week.

I've been making little changes and putting things in place to get me in a good position for the round (and beyond) - check out my Instagram for an explanation of some of these.  One example is I brought an old pair of shoes to work today, to keep under my desk, so that I can do lunch time walks and not use the excuse that I forgot my shoes, as I sometimes do.

My goals / mini milestones are on track already too, without me having to do anything!  Thanks to me sharing my plans on my last blog post, a lovely Instagram follower of mine has offered to help me do my "Girl in Blue" task as she's a police officer, and a few 30+ friends are keen to join me for heaps of my other tasks!  I feel very lucky!

That's all for tonight, I just wanted to do a quick check in to let you know how I'm tracking with pre-season and the lead up to the May round.  I say this about every round, and I'm not ashamed to say it again: I really want to try hard and do well this round.  If there was one positive to stuffing up so much last year, it was that I got first hand experience (again) in the form of a stark reminder of why I don't want to be where I started (morbidly obese). 
Cheese tasting...another temptation this week

I got insights (reminders) into how that felt, just in case I had forgotten - and it wasn't fun.  It was a good lesson to learn, to keep in mind now, before it's too late, that I want to get to goal weight, and I want to maintain it.  Before then I sort of hadn't thought too much about the maintaining side of things.  I went nuts and was doing well with weight loss, then faltered because I had no insight into the longevity of this world.

I now realise that there's a maintenance part at the end of all of this. So now I'm continuing my journey, but now knowing that this is forever.  I've been going at this for a while now, I know, but I haven't given up.  I've just had to learn my lessons, as we all do.  And my biggest lesson is that the greatest strength lies in turning things around when you really didn't think you could.  The below quote sums it up so beautifully.

Love Kate x


Saturday 25 April 2015

My plans for 12WBT May Round

I've spent some time today planning my May Round and feel pretty on track with knowing what I want from it!  Because I've done consecutive rounds since I began, I tend to only sign up in the week the new round starts, so that I can give my full attention to the round I'm currently doing.  (Note that I said "so that I can give my full attention".  I don't always actually give said attention!  But I allow for it). :)

This round starts on Monday 4th May.  I signed up today, and got stuck into pre-season.  I'm
pretty impressed with myself so far!  When I finish this blog post (my 'Say It Out Loud'), I will have done 8 of the tasks just today!  Go me!  I've got a plan for the rest of them: I've worked out when I can fit them all in this coming week.  I'm determined to complete all of them before the round opens!  I really want to commit to this round.

I've chosen the Move program.  It was pretty tough to select when I know what fitness stuff I've done in the past.  But I have to be realistic - I have so many injuries at the moment and need to be gentle and smart.  I may change after the plans are released, but for now it seems like the perfect program for me.

I also updated a few of my 'little things that I do', including resetting my "I need a second job to afford them" rewards plan, and my weekly mini milestones for the round.  I've been very uncommitted at sticking to my weekly milestones for a few rounds now.  But I've never given up on any goals I've set, I've just pushed each one out and today I reset when I'm doing each one, and added more.

My mini milestones for May Round are:

Week 1: Get organised (I'll explain this in detail in my next post, I'm excited about this one!)

Week 2: Girl in Blue (This is one I was interested in when I first planned to do it, well over a year ago!  Now it's annoying me that I haven't actually done it yet, so I am going to try again!  I'll annoy myself if I explain again what it is, so here is where I first talked about it)

Week 3: Start water running (I've had friends suggest that I do this while I'm injured, to keep my cardio / running up with little/no impact on my body.  I've been 'meaning to' for a while now so I made it an official mini milestone to encourage myself to actually put it into place!)

Week 4: Try a new parkrun (One of many carry over goals. I've tried 4 different parkruns before but there's plenty of others very close to me that would be interesting to check out)

Week 5: Walk home from work (I live about 8-10km from work.  I've done this as a mini milestone when I worked somewhere else, but would like to try it from my new workplace.  It's not something I can do practically all the time, but I'd like to test it out and see how it goes)

Week 6: Learn how to curl my hair (This probably doesn't sound like a normal type of mini milestone!  But I try to set my milestones as things that I've always meant to do, or things to make me feel good about myself, or things that challenge me - and this falls into all 3 of those categories!  In the early days my milestones were all about smashing my body through crazy exercise goals...I try to do different things now - especially when I'm all kinds of injured!)

Week 7: Walk to work (So this is obviously similar to Week 5's goal, just the opposite!  I think this will be more difficult, as walking to, I'll have time restrictions and have the 'needing to get changed for work' factor, but I'd still like to at least test it out.  Note that a lot of these milestones are walking milestones, while I'm not allowed to run....)

Week 8: Research sugar (This is an interesting one that I'm excited about!  I know this has been popular for a while now, but I've never had an interest in learning about the concept, until now.  I take my time with some things..... :)  A work colleague of mine a couple of years ago read one of those 'sugar books' and stopped eating ALL sugar.  All I remember is that she threw out the pain tablets in her desk drawer because they contained sugar, and stopped eating tomato sauce.  (I know it was more complex then that, that's all I remember!)  I had no interest in such a thing back then but now I'm finally interested to at least read / watch about it and do a bit of research.  (Thanks to Gabi and Leanne for helping with sparking this interest!) x

Week 9: Play a game of baseball (Another carry over goal.  Just because I haven't played it since primary school, and loved it back then.  Why not!)

Week 10: Walk one of the Redcliffe bridges (There's a couple of long bridges near where I live, in an area called Redcliffe.  I just said 'one of' because there's a couple of bridges side by side and I need to check which one/s are accessible for pedestrians.  My little brother helped design one of the bridges and I'm so proud of him every time I drive across....so I would like to walk it one day!  Hopefully I can...any Brisbane region readers, advice is welcome!)

Week 11: Do the steep hill next to my old work (I explained this here)

Week 12: Iceskating (Another carry over goal, just for fun) :)

So there they are!

I've also decided on a new 'Operation Yellow Dress'!  It will be called....'Operation Polka Dot Dress'!  I explained on my Instagram post how this came about, here.  I'll post the update
My new 'Operation Yellow Dress'!
photos on my blog and Instagram, starting this week!  Hopefully the dress goes over my head at least, to start with.  Eeek!

That is all from me tonight!  Be back soon!  And bring on the May Round....may I stick to my commitment!
xo

Monday 20 April 2015

"When do you think I can run again?"

Hello!

I have a few things to chat about today, but firstly, if you're reading this on a computer, check out the side panel of my blog ------> I finally worked out how to add my Instagram feed onto my blog!  Seeing as my blog posts aren't exactly daily (or weekly!) at the moment, this is the perfect way for me to keep you up to date, as I post on Instagram way more regularly!  I feel I'll be blogging more regularly now, but in any case, it's nice to know that I can share my day to day stories here, too, instead of having to retell tales.

Also while I was being all pro with Javascript (or HTML?) and stuff, I noticed something pretty incredible, in that this blog has now reached over 200000 hits.  It's pretty special to see that when I think about when I started this blog, how nervous I was, and how it took me months to even include a photo of myself on here.

To anyone reading this who has been following my journey since Day '1', recently, or anywhere in between, I sincerely say thank you.  I may not always get to answering messages and comments, but please know that I read everything and the support that I get from people following me is one of the major things that keeps me going.

Because it has been (yet again!) :o a few weeks since I posted, there's heaps to catch up on, but first I just wanted to share my exciting visit to the Osteopath today!

It's been way too long between visits to Dr Bec.  She's the most incredible Osteo - I went to multiple Chiros and Physios before I heard about this place.  It's the only thing that's ever assisted with my back issues.

For many reasons, I haven't been to see Bec since...she told me today, December 2013. 
That is not cool.  Back when this happened, it was a sharp wake up call to me that I had to make Osteo visits a priority, not just a "when I can type of thing".

It's now April and I finally went along today.  I've been putting other things in front of looking after myself and it can't continue like that any more.  (More on that in an upcoming post!)

I've been sick in bed for a couple of days and have had some time to do some organising and researching.  I reorganised my health insurance to make it more affordable to be able to go along regularly, and in my research came across something called a "Chronic Disease Management Plan".  In Australia you can assessed to go on one of these from your GP and it creates a management plan that allows you to be able to get Medicare rebates for some visits to health professionals, in my case, my Osteo.

I've been dealing with my back since I was 16, I'm surprised I didn't know this was an option until now - my GP's have only ever given me painkillers.  I asked about the plan today as I was already going to my GP and 10min. later, I had it.  That easy!

Anyway, back to Dr Bec.  I booked a double appointment as I have so many issues at the moment: I needed to give her a full rundown and then I also needed time to get worked on!  I spoke about my back, my knee injury, chest pain (I've had it checked and have been told it's muscular), major stress causing tightness, and my ongoing mystery "O" pain.  She had her
work cut out for her but, as always, was brilliant.  She just knows what's going on and manoeuvred me so well.  I'm in a place where I'm so limited with exercises when so many parts of me have issues.

My back and "O pain" are ongoing things but she still worked on them, she started work on my chest and knee, and focused mainly on my stress / tightness.

With my knee, I was hoping to see what her thoughts were about it, to hopefully get a diagnosis and a semi idea about when I might be able to run again.  I haven't run since I hurt my knee, which was about the 1st February.  I already thought it was an overuse injury, and yes, that's what it is.  It was nice to get a bit more understanding about it though.  It's likely to be "Patella Tendonitis" - in my words: "Doing stairs religiously every day in January caused me to overuse my knee and damage it".

I've mentioned before how I love doing "stairs", my internal stairs in my apartment block, to supplement my exercise.  It doesn't matter what time of day it is, or the weather, I can get it done.  I was so good and onto it in January.  Up and down those stairs I went, from New Years Day, pretty much daily.  It's all fun and games until someone damages a knee though.....

I can't describe how happy I was to get on top of all of this, and to have this stuff seen to.  Organising a little plan with Dr Bec, getting my health insurance updated and getting a pain management plan has done wonders for my mindset.  I've spent the past 10 weeks being patient with my knee and not running, just following my initial care plan, but today was a major step forward into getting 'fixed'.

Halfway through my appointment, I asked Bec the all important question, "when do you think I can run again?"  It's early days in this rehabilitaion plan but at first guess, she said.............


Two months.

Now long time readers will know me quite well and know that this timeframe has probably shattered me to tears.  If anyone recalls my Gold Coast Marathon disappointment and how I constantly overthink things and how I put too many expectations on myself and push myself no matter what (do I need to go on?) ------- you'd be forgiven to think that this news has sent me into a tailspin.

But it hasn't.  I think it's just that I've had time (10 weeks!) to get myself used to the idea.  The past 10 weeks has coincedentally also taught me a lot about how I need to put myself first (I will talk more on this!) and I think I'm just at a point where I know I need to do things properly, look after myself and only do what I can do.  (Kate, is that you??)

I got to have a chat with the one and only Mish a few weeks ago, and it was the most rewarding chat.  I mentioned that I hadn't been able to do my usual exercise of late, because of my knee.  She shared with me that she'd recently had a knee reconstruction and had
been in pretty much the same position as me.  I can't describe how inspiring this spontaneous chat turned out to be.  She understood how frustrating it was, she explained how she instead controlled what she could, and then shared with me, and listed for a couple of minutes, many exercises that we can do when we can't work our knees.  I had no idea there were so many, and it gave me a renewed energy that yes, there was stuff I could do in the meantime. 

I've continued going to boot camp through this knee injury, and that's been my saviour - my trainer Margie is awesome and we have adapted things so that I can still participate.  I would be practically sedentary if it weren't for it.  But outside of boot camp, I've been at a loss as to what I can do to keep active while I have this injury.  This chat gave me inspiration and ideas.

It was also inspiring to me because 5min. previous, I had seen Mish lead a workout, and she was jumping up and down with so much energy that when I realised she'd recently had knee surgery, it made me teary with hope, that one day again soon, I'll too be able to jump up and down, and run, and do all the things I'm so used to doing, once again.  She said something to me that's stuck in my mind, too: "Control the controllables". 

I've thought of that phrase so much lately....

I think I've just had time to get used to this idea and realise that sometimes we just have to be patient.  I'm not in a good place at the moment (I will explain next post), and being in this 'place' has also helped me to feel ready to just ride out what needs to be ridden out, to 'control the controllables', and work hard so that when it all calms down, I will be ready to get out there and do what I want to do.

I had a running break when I hurt my ankle and had my moon boot on 18 months ago.  I had just started to be able to run 5km before I hurt my ankle.  I kept my exercise up (walking etc.) while I was wearing it, and when it came off, I had lost 19kg and was suddenly able to run 11km.  So I have valid personal proof that running breaks can be managed well! 

I'm not saying having a break will be easy: I struggled last weekend when the Australian Running Festival was on in Canberra that I had booked (and subsequently cancelled) my flights to - it was hard knowing it was going on when I had planned to be there.  And I have a wholllllllle list of runs I had planned to do this year.  But I have to be strong and just do what I can.  At least now I have an idea of when I might be able to run again, and now I can start replanning and setting new goals (one of my favourite things).  There are always going to be challenges.  We just have to never give up and we'll get there. 

I'll leave it for there tonight, but I just wanted to share where I'm at with the running side of things.  This doesn't mean I can't control my weight - I still have the ability to do that.  Hopefully soon we'll get the other pains managed as well.  But in the meantime, I will control the controllables, try and stay positive, replan my goals and move forward!

Love Kate xo